Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (25 page)

She hated how powerless she felt, how trapped and alone.

As she sat on her bed, she wondered how long that creep had been watching her. She wracked her brain, trying to figure out what he could have seen or heard that could put her—or those girls—at even greater risk. She shuddered at the idea that he might have seen her having sex with Ryan, if it had come to that today.

Her mind drifted back to the video, and she felt tears sting her eyes at what had happened to those girls. She couldn’t let it continue. Martin Hays had to be stopped; she didn’t know how the unsub had gotten hold of that footage. It could be through P2P networks or they could be working together. She didn’t care, really; she just wanted Martin Hays in jail, where he belonged. She wished she knew if the FBI and the GBI had made any progress investigating him, or even if they had taken her tips seriously. Raquel had warned her that sending them the information without any hard evidence was not likely to trigger a full-blown investigation.

“Fuck.” She threw her pillow across the room, wishing she had taken up boxing or karate instead of yoga. She stalked into the kitchen and pulled an apple and some cheese out of the fridge. She wasn’t particularly hungry, though it was almost four. She’d been working for several hours straight, skipping lunch. She didn’t know what the fuck she was going to do, but she wasn’t spending one more damn second in her apartment. Snatching up her phone, she called Ryan.

“Helmer.”

“Ryan, I’m going for a run. I can’t stay cooped up in here.”

“Not by yourself.”

“I’ll get Raquel to come with me. She’s been helping Tavey, but she’s supposed to come back up.”

“All right.” His voice sounded grudging, and a little distracted, like there were people around him.

“Okay. Talk to you later.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, but just as she was about to hang up, he said something else. “Chris?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful, please?” he said, echoing her parting words to him.

Chris felt a stab of guilt that left her breathless. She had every intention of being careful on her run, but that wasn’t what he was asking. He was asking her not to take any risks, and she couldn’t promise that, not without lying, so she deliberately misunderstood and sidestepped his questions.

“I’ll be with a cop. I’ll be just fine.”

She hung up quickly, not trusting herself to keep quiet. She wanted to tell him the truth, wanted to lay everything on his shoulders and just forget it all, but she couldn’t put what she wanted over the lives of those girls—she just couldn’t.

29

JOE HAD KNOWN
that his Creator would need to tell the police to find the body, but he was curious whether she would reveal her bargain with him as well. If she did, she wouldn’t get any more information about those girls.

If she decided to tell, he needed another way to get her to come to the woods. He thought that a little insurance would be appropriate.

He scanned the circle with his binoculars, looking at the people who were walking through it. People had gathered around his Creator’s building, either standing around staring up at her windows or gossiping in small groups as they watched the police cars and TV cameras. He’d seen his Creator briefly in a news report online.

He followed their strings, tracing them with his eyes as they crisscrossed and intersected. The strings told him whom they loved, whom they hated, who had wronged them. He learned so much by watching the threads of people’s lives. He caught a brief flash of three bright gold strings, as gold as the string his Creator wore on her head, leading up to the yoga studio, and beyond. He focused in on three girls with blond hair who were walking arm in arm across the courtyard, but by the time he’d adjusted the binoculars, the strings had disappeared. They didn’t seem to have any strings at all, actually, though he knew he’d seen them just moments before.

“How interesting,” he whispered; he’d seen them before, but he hadn’t realized their relation to his Creator was so strong. They cared for her, he realized, and she cared for them.

“Very interesting,” he concluded, and followed them with his eyes until they disappeared into the building.

30

CHRIS WAS LYING.
Ryan didn’t know how he knew she was lying, but he was certain of it. He’d just finished talking to the counter clerk at the gas station, who also happened to be the owner. The man had an interesting story to tell. Apparently a couple had pulled into the parking lot in a white commercial van, the logo for some company on the side.

The clerk hadn’t thought much of it, but then the woman had gotten out of the van and come into the store, asking to use the bathroom.

“She seemed scared, like a woman who lived in a constant state of fear. It spooked me. The guy lingered by the van, didn’t come inside, but kept his eyes trained on the store.
Maybe they’re going to attack me,
I think, but nothing happened. She went back to the van, where he was waiting for her by her door. He didn’t touch her, but she was very clearly afraid. Trembling. Then they drove away, very fast to the east.”

Ryan had questioned the man further, asking for a more detailed description, but the man had never come into the store and the clerk hadn’t seen him clearly.

“He was a man you would forget. He had on a gray uniform, I think, and a baseball cap on his head.”

“Why did you call the police?”

The owner, a Pakistani man with scars on both his cheeks, had held his hands out. “The girl. She reminded me of a woman I used to know. I was worried for her, so I called.”

With the owner’s permission, he took copies of the surveillance tapes for the store and the fuel islands.

He called Midaugh to update him.

“Yeah. I don’t know if this is our unsub, but it’s worth taking a look. There was a woman with him. So far she fits the description of Martha Cooper, but we’ll have to check the tapes. Here’s what’s weird, though, Midaugh. He wasn’t controlling her. She walked alone into the store and didn’t say a word to the clerk.”

“She had the opportunity?”

“She did.”

“Interesting. Maybe she left with him voluntarily.”

“Could be,” Ryan agreed, “but the owner said she seemed terrified.”

“All right, bring it in and we’ll add it to the information we have now.”

“I need to get back over to Fate. I have a weird feeling something’s going on with Chris.”

“Helmer, this is a solid lead. You need to get your ass in here and check out what’s on those surveillance tapes.”

“Fuck. I know.”

“She’ll be fine. Her friend the cop is with her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what?”

“She knows something, I think.”

“Well, come in and we’ll check the remote connection to her computers, see if he’s contacted her in any way.”

It was as good an option as any at the moment, but Ryan had every intention of visiting Chris tonight, just to make sure she didn’t do something stupid. He wouldn’t put anything past her, especially after that taunt she’d sent out to the unsub.

He drove to Rome with his flashing lights on, wanting to check the video as quickly as possible and get back to Fate.

CHRIS MET RAQUEL
downstairs in the lobby, next to the side entrance to Dog.

“Everything all good in there?” she asked, not wanting to go in and see Betty. She was guaranteed to ask about the handsome man, and Chris just wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, not with thoughts of Martin Hays and the location of that little girl’s body.

“Yeah, the girl’s all bandaged up. Tavey sent her home and now she’s helping to squeeze dog butts and clip hair. I swear, I don’t know how Tavey manages the store, the dogs, and Once Was Lost.”

“Tavey likes being busy.” Chris understood that all too well. Raquel stayed busy as well, but she was better at relaxing when she wasn’t at work. Chris’s work never left her.

“She called one of the deputies to push back the reporters as well.”

Chris walked to the long, narrow window in the lobby and looked out at the circle, where a few reporters were gathered. One of the county deputies who worked in the office in the circle had pulled his patrol car up and parked it in front of Dog, keeping the reporters back from the patrons.

“Think we can get out of here without being spotted?”

“Beats me, sugar, but we’ll go out the back.”

Chris shrugged. The way she felt, she was likely to deck anyone who gave her any shit, but she’d rather avoid them if possible.

They exited the back door and immediately broke into a fast jog, heading away from the circle and the center of town. They crossed several blocks and took a right up a hill that led into one of the small neighborhoods on the outside of the town proper where Raquel lived in a small 1940s ranch that had belonged to her grandmother.

Clouds covered the sky, but there wasn’t supposed to be any rain. A light breeze shook the orange-red leaves that remained on the trees and the air smelled of fires, of damp earth and the coming winter.

Even without rain, the hill was not an easy climb. Surrounded by trees on both sides, it rose at a steep incline that tested the women’s thighs and left them breathless when they finally reached the top.

They paused to stretch on the corner, ignoring the occasional honk from passing drivers. The view into town was fragmented by branches, but Chris could make out the circle and the buildings surrounding it.

Chris didn’t think she was acting strangely, but when they finally started moving again, jogging on the tree-lined streets in one of the old neighborhoods, Raquel asked Chris if something was bothering her.

“Bothering me?” Chris tried to play it off like it was a ridiculous question.

“Okay, that was a pretty stupid question. Is anything
else
bothering you?”

Chris wasn’t sure what to do, that was the problem. She had the location of one body, she was sure of it, but if she told anyone how she knew about it, the Feds would be on her ass about her contact with the unsub. If she told them about the meeting, figured out a way to get them to capture the asshole, odds were she’d lose any information the unsub had about the missing girls.

Still, the odds were good that she’d end up dead if she didn’t tell anyone . . . and the girls would still be missing.

“If I told you something, would you look into it without asking how I found out?”

Raquel stopped jogging, putting a hand on Chris’s arm to stop her as well.

“Girl, what do you know?”

Chris swallowed. “The location of one of the missing girls in the Martin Hays case, I think. Her body, anyway.”

“Shit, Chris. What the fuck? Why haven’t you told anyone?”

Chris didn’t want to answer that, not even a little bit, but Raquel knew Chris well enough to figure it out on her own. “The killer told you, didn’t he? The one who’s obsessed with you?”

Chris nodded.

“You have to tell the FBI.”

“I know.”

“Chris, I don’t get it, why wouldn’t you say anything?”

“He knows where the rest are. He has evidence of what Hays did to them.”

Raquel fell silent and started walking. After a moment Chris joined her.